Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Two new queries were created. The first is the Random query requested for the demo and the second is the first casting query which I felt would be needed in many cases in combination with other queries. These queries also required a small enhancement to our console which was not correctly handling nested numerical queries.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

The new repository is in place and appears to be working good enough, the DNS settings were changed so that the old URL would point to the new server but the propagation of the DNS settings may take up to 2 days. A minor change may be required on the clients to access the new repository, however, everything has been maintained including all logs.

Once the repository is accessible I will be updating the information on accessing it as well as how to make the change (hopefully) without having to re-download anything.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Zachary Turner has just finished work on his first tool for I2B, which is the "Dictionary Editor". This tool will help designers edit the class dictionary without risk of introducing typos. Another closely related tool is the "Prototypes Editor" is also underway. Both tools will be combined into a single executable to allow for easier cross referencing.

The reason these tools are being built at this time is that the programming group is already ahead of schedule, so putting more effort on tools would help the content group speed up their production.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

A new member has joined the I2B group, Gustavo, as a graphics programmer. He will be building a DirectX implementation for our graphics interface. This task has been on our list for so long but never received enough attention or resources.

How will this new implementation turn out is yet to be seen. Hopefully, we will be posting good news about it soon.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Seems like things have been quite over here. This does not mean we were idle, I would like to remind everybody to keep an eye on our boards because this is where most of our discussions are at this time. I suggest everybody subscribes to the boards of interest to be able to participate in relevant topics without missing them altogether.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I've been very busy and have spent a limited amount of time on the project, but from Monday 5th october I will start arranging meetings again. I may not be on broadband at my place, it depends how so I manage to get round to setting up my computers. But I will be less busy from then on and will attend at someone else place. I will be recruiting more members prior to that day so we can get more done more quickly. Currently I'm working on a feature in my scene editor which converts html to a scene, which may sound strange to some, but this would be a efficient way to create complex UI screens, since the artists and designers are proficient with web design; any web designer would then be able to create UI XML for our engine without knowledge of how the engine works or about the scripts; it is just a matter of 5-7 days before I can start it, and it will only support the HTML tags and custom tags we are interested in. It will save time, making adjustments to button positions, sizes can be made instantly this way. alot of time and it would mean we could easily find more people to help with the demo. As for game maps, the scene editor would handle that.

I will aso be creating a generator for sci fi space bases, buildings and machines, perhaps 2-3 weeks work or so, but it will produce about 300-500 basic sci fi buildings and machines, with our exclusive royalties. It will be a challenge to make them look extremely different from each other, but I've done a reasonable job with the rocket and planet generators. I will attempt to perform boolean operations and polygon optimization so that the objects can be used in the 3d engine aswell. Obviously in a sci-fi environment, there are alot of buildings in machines everywhere; think starwars death star; so to imagine 1 or 2 people modeling one object per hour to make up an entire universe would be unlikely. Instead I will program Cinema 4D to do the job; so the artists can focus on the primary 3d objects such as spacecraft, characters and weapons.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

I have been busy building an alternative scene editor and incorporating it inside a software package which is part of a game design tool project. I intend to invest more time on the editor so that more people can get involved with the scene building without having to learn XML and the I2B script. As the first step, I have developed the following functions:

Load XML and format if necessary. It will overwrite the existing XML file and 'empty element tags' to full ones. (My parser does not read empty element tags)

Load the Class Dictionary

Load Assets and populate sprites in a list

Load Prototypes and populate an entity prototype list

Create entity instances a scene (After selecting a prototype in a list which turns creation mode on )

The next step will be correct bugs and tidy things up. The main problem is the fact that the engine reduces images larger than 4096 pixels in height or width. I will provide a means to work with glyphs, more than 1 layer and large scene areas with different parallax settings. Provide a means to create prototypes, edit properties, create classes, load scenes, edit sprites, edit actions, edit events and anything else required to develop I2B scenarios quickly.The program uses two executable; a main interface and a scene canvas. The attached zip file contains GDesign.exe in the root folder which is all that needs to be run, Direct X 9 would need to be installed for it to work. It should then ask you to specify where your scene folder is stored, EG: c:\I2B\Repository\Binaries\Spacecraft\.

To operate, you simply need to select an asset file in the file browser. You must first select a file such as LotusAssets.xml, then it will display 'Assets' as the file type if the program recogonizes your selection as an asset file. Then you double click to load. You will see a list of assets appear in the asset browser, which will take a while to load, especially if you are loading many assets.Next you need to load a prototypes file, such as LotusEntityPrototypes.xml, in the same fashion as done with the assets file; the difference is that the entity browser is loaded with entities you can insert. Once you select one, you can select the canvas and plot the entity in the scene. You can edit previously created entities after pressing the escape key to exit creation mode.

Friday, August 14, 2009

I've added one of the last entities for the demo, although there are lots of map assets needed. Since I am offline, I will now complete more of my alternative scene editor which can be used whilst the official one is being completed, allowing for more creative members to participate in developing the game without taking up much time.

Friday, August 7, 2009

As planned, the repository server is now read-only. As soon as the new server is prepared, the URLs will be updated and we can commit again. In the meanwhile, any changes should be submitted as patches against a known revision number.